09-26-2020, 09:05 AM
If they're in a position to setup a live ops team that's dedicated to generating MTX related content and delivering said content in a timeframe, why can not they upscale their core content team to supply the exact same level of RuneScape gold content whilst keeping it within the ETAs they cite to us.
You understand why: money. The fact of the matter is, important content updates require a shitload of work and usually don't create a whole lot of money. Comparatively, a little event with buyable money does not take much work and brings in a shitload of cash.
Let us say it took a team of 10 (devs+art+QA+PM) about a month to make it (I can not imagine it taking a whole lot more than this ). Assuming $50/hr, that's ~$80,000 to develop this event. It costs about $40 in bonds to buy every one the cosmetics, and that's not including leveling up the artisan, IDK how mathematics works out but skimming the amounts it'd probably be at least twice that, so let's say $80. That means just ~1000 gamers will need to pay for this event for it to be rewarding, and that's not even including the whales who'll purchase everything plus a dozen of each of those consumables, or even the many more that will set a couple of bonds into it but maybe not go all-in.
It was officially declared about 3 weeks before release, so you know it had been in development a long time prior to that. It brought new resources, story development, etc.. Most likely this would have been multiple months of development with rather a large group, but just to prove the point, let us say it costs exactly the same as the Artisan event to develop this exploration. Unlike the previous case, it costs nothing for present members to participate this content. The only way that this makes money is if people come back into this game and resubscribe to play this. At $11/month for membership, you would need over 5000 players to resub in order for this to be profitable. That is 5x the participation needed compared to some little MTX event, and this is based on bringing in fresh or bringing back returning subs - something much tougher to do than getting present users to spend a little extra.
At the end of the afternoon, Jagex is a business, and when they want to keep the lights on, then they can't manage to dump buckets of money into content that doesn't earn revenue. I'm not saying that this is an excuse to buy RS gold not develop new content - on the contrary, they have to keep the userbase participated or there will be nobody left to pay for anything - but it will explain why monetized content appears to be prioritized and sent more precisely than other content. As it stands now, the MTX content is exactly what funds the true content. Personally, I quite like the way they're leaning of bringing in certain permanent improvement with every event, even if this first one wasn't a massive success.
You understand why: money. The fact of the matter is, important content updates require a shitload of work and usually don't create a whole lot of money. Comparatively, a little event with buyable money does not take much work and brings in a shitload of cash.
Let us say it took a team of 10 (devs+art+QA+PM) about a month to make it (I can not imagine it taking a whole lot more than this ). Assuming $50/hr, that's ~$80,000 to develop this event. It costs about $40 in bonds to buy every one the cosmetics, and that's not including leveling up the artisan, IDK how mathematics works out but skimming the amounts it'd probably be at least twice that, so let's say $80. That means just ~1000 gamers will need to pay for this event for it to be rewarding, and that's not even including the whales who'll purchase everything plus a dozen of each of those consumables, or even the many more that will set a couple of bonds into it but maybe not go all-in.
It was officially declared about 3 weeks before release, so you know it had been in development a long time prior to that. It brought new resources, story development, etc.. Most likely this would have been multiple months of development with rather a large group, but just to prove the point, let us say it costs exactly the same as the Artisan event to develop this exploration. Unlike the previous case, it costs nothing for present members to participate this content. The only way that this makes money is if people come back into this game and resubscribe to play this. At $11/month for membership, you would need over 5000 players to resub in order for this to be profitable. That is 5x the participation needed compared to some little MTX event, and this is based on bringing in fresh or bringing back returning subs - something much tougher to do than getting present users to spend a little extra.
At the end of the afternoon, Jagex is a business, and when they want to keep the lights on, then they can't manage to dump buckets of money into content that doesn't earn revenue. I'm not saying that this is an excuse to buy RS gold not develop new content - on the contrary, they have to keep the userbase participated or there will be nobody left to pay for anything - but it will explain why monetized content appears to be prioritized and sent more precisely than other content. As it stands now, the MTX content is exactly what funds the true content. Personally, I quite like the way they're leaning of bringing in certain permanent improvement with every event, even if this first one wasn't a massive success.
![[Image: d0f83beb-bea9-4894-9811-56cc3777dc58.jpeg]](https://teletype.in/files/d0/f8/d0f83beb-bea9-4894-9811-56cc3777dc58.jpeg)
![[Image: 6bb8d5f0-5842-47ad-8c84-856002fad8e1.png]](https://teletype.in/files/6b/b8/6bb8d5f0-5842-47ad-8c84-856002fad8e1.png)
![[Image: 3e864d37-289d-459f-9288-f7d270383841.png]](https://teletype.in/files/3e/86/3e864d37-289d-459f-9288-f7d270383841.png)